Police

Career Criminal Facing Indictment?

Isaac Gaon, who has told police in the past he steals cars to feed his heroin habit, being led away from courthouse after being arraigned last week. Independent/T. E. McMorrow

A serial car thief is facing time in state prison after being arrested last week by the East Hampton Town police. For Isaac Gaon, 49, prison time is nothing new: He has been convicted at least six times on felony charges, including multiple grand theft auto charges, and has served time in five of New York’s 55 state prisons.

His most recent arrest came after he was picked up by East Hampton Town police after he reported to his parole officer in Bohemia on December 12. He was charged with criminal possession of stolen property, a car.

Using DNA samples extracted from a glove and a partially smoked marijuana cigarette left behind in a 2010 Volvo XC90 midsize sport utility vehicle reported stolen this past March in the Northwest Woods area, the Suffolk County Crime lab linked the items to Gaon, whose DNA, as a convicted felon, is on file with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

His history of arrests and convictions is as long as any in recent memory to come through East Hampton Town Justice Court, where he was arraigned December 13.

In 1992, Gaon was sentenced for four to eight years after being convicted on grand larceny, burglary, and criminal possession of stolen property charges in Nassau County. He served his time after that conviction at the Queensboro Correctional facility in Long Island City. He was released in 1996, and was soon back behind bars, after being convicted in Suffolk County on an attempted burglary charge. He served that time upstate in the Marcy Correctional Facility.

An arrest by police in Old Brookville in Nassau County in 2000 led to a 2002 conviction for grand larceny, and attempted grand larceny landed him in the upstate Ulster facility, not once, but twice after violating terms of his parole in 2008.

Yet again in Nassau County, in 2010, he was convicted of grand larceny for stealing a car. According to an article in the Voice of the Village in Old Brookville in 2009, following the arrest that led to the 2010 conviction, Gaon was accused of stealing high-end cars, then taking them to Brooklyn. He allegedly told police at the time that he targeted wealthier areas along the north shore, because people frequently left their cars unlocked overnight, which appears to be the case with the Northwest Woods theft in March.

Often, according to his record, his haul included not only the autos, but credit cards left inside. All this, he reportedly told Old Brookville police after his 2009 arrest, was to feed his heroin habit. He served five years out of the three to seven-year sentence he received after that arrest in the Bare Hill Correctional facility upstate in Malone.

A 2016 conviction on another grand larceny charge out of Suffolk County landed Gaon in the Willard Correctional Facility, from which it appears he was
released after six months.

Gaon is not partial to committing crimes on Long Island: his record includes a conviction on a grand theft auto charge in Miami Dade County in 1999, and there appears to have a Massachusetts conviction somewhere along the line, as well.

Because of his multiple convictions, Gaon remained in custody as of Tuesday.

Monday was an important day for another person with a history of felony convictions arrested recently by East Hampton Town police. Daisy Guerrero, 33, was arraigned in the Riverside County Courtroom of State Justice Stephen Braslow, who set bail at $100,000. She remained in custody as of Tuesday morning.

Guerrero was arrested on a felony drunken driving charge December 2, and was indicted by a grand jury a few days later. She has two prior felony driving while intoxicated convictions, plus a felony grand larceny conviction in her past.

Her license has been revoked many times over by the Department of Motor Vehicles in New York following her numerous convictions on DWI and lesser charges. Besides the felony DWI charge she is now facing, it appears from online court documents that the grand jury hit her with five counts of felony driving without a license, one for each time her license has been revoked.